Name: Nina Simon
Age: 34
City: Unincorporated Santa Cruz County
Position: Executive director, Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History
J.: You’ve been called a “museum visionary” by Smithsonian magazine; your blog, Museum 2.0, and your book “The Participatory Museum” are widely read in your field. But you have a bachelor’s degree in engineering and mathematics. How did you get from there to here?
Nina Simon: In college I saw so many engineering students who were afraid of math. And I thought math was so beautiful, and that classrooms weren’t the best place to learn math. I started doing puppet shows about math at a museum, and found that museums can be great places for free-choice learning. I worked as an engineer for a while at NASA but found that museums were really where I wanted to be.
Your name and your contributions to the museum world are well known. What do you think resonates about your message?
First of all, this idea of including visitors, involving visitors, it’s been around for at least 120 years, when public museums first started in this country. But what is new and what’s catching on now is the rise of Web 2.0, the social web and the sense that we have abundant opportunities online to present and curate information collaboratively. And that is trickling offline into how museums do business. Second, all traditional arts organizations, not just museums, are struggling with the fact that their users are overwhelmingly whiter, more affluent and more well educated than the general population. So we’re realizing that we need to find ways of involving everyone in a community to become more relevant.
What does your ideal museum look like?
There are a million different kinds of museums, and that’s a good thing. Every museum should be authentic to its mission and its community. Most museums in this country are not the Met. They’re small community museums, and the more tuned in to the wishes and dreams and interests of their communities, the more successful they will be.
What’s the story behind your current “Princes of Surf” exhibit (through Oct. 25)?
Surfing first came to the Americas in 1885 here in Santa Cruz. There were three teenage Hawaiian princes going to school in San Mateo. They went down to Santa Cruz for vacation, and while they were here they worked with a local redwood lumber mill to create these boards, and it was the first documented time that surfing happened in the U.S. Their boards eventually became part of the collection at a museum in Hawaii and went into storage for many years. They are on loan to us now, bringing them all the way full circle.
What role does your Jewish background play in your work?
In Reconstructionism we have this whole idea that we have to be constantly reconstructing to create something meaningful and valuable — and I take that into my work every day. I grew up as a Reform Jew, and there was such an emphasis on service and community life, so that has influenced me.
What’s your take on Jewish museums?
What’s interesting about any museum that is culturally specific is there’s always this question of: Do we exist to serve this community of people, or do we exist to build bridges to other cultures? I visited the museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw. There are almost no Polish Jews left in Poland, so this question of who do these museums exist for is important.
You have a rather unusual living situation, right?
My husband and I live off the grid in a cabin in the woods in Santa Cruz. It’s a property with seven cabins, 14 people, five dogs and 20 chickens on 40 acres. I would say it’s cooperative living for the 21st century. It’s not a kibbutz, but we do garden together and eat together. So many people are thinking about how to build community, and that’s an important part of my work life and my home life.
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